CHAPTER 1
A little girl sits upfront in a creeping hearse, depressed, silent, journeying toward an uncertain future. Then I see a once cheerful adult turn on himself and evaporate in a blast. Another explosion goes off, and a lost love is now lost for eternity. Shaking my head fiercely, I clear the memories that refuse to live below the surface. They will soon return with others. No need to tell me that. I know I have practically lost everything, so there’s also no need to tell me that. But a coin of consolation is always within reach. I have one now, the man responsible for my tragedies, your tragedies. Let’s just say he’s currently being disciplined, a punishment which was most overdue.
My arm tightens around his throat, choking out more of the recession and arrogance. His fingers claw into my sweatpants as his mouth sputters at the Maryland night. The bald head reeks of banker, an outrageous odor the government bailout failed to remedy, and most assuredly, I am under no contract to show him respect. I pay taxes. We the people saved his job. Therefore, I have the right to treat the gangster however I want.
He flails at a tree just before his arms fall like a weak economy, going limp against my thighs. A vein of conscience makes me release the chokehold, and I let him begin a sideward descent. Right after his shoulder pleasantly slams into the ground, I disappear in true hero fashion, jogging away and whooping throughout another Geronimo moment of triumph, barely avoiding shapes of trees, statues, and benches. Once again I have lived up to an inner calling. Once again a banker, that banker, has forced my hand and received a greater good. He’ll wake up with a serious headache, it’s the least I expect, and I hope he vomits the experience, maybe even feels disoriented for a while. As plain as the clouds above that hide the moon, he obviously made two critical mistakes--he should never have become a banker, and he should never have used the park for a shortcut.
My whoops turn into full-blown bellows the instant I jog past the last tree. Fearing someone will hear and spot me, I clamp a hand over my mouth and dart across two neighborhood streets to reach my Chevy Camaro.
“Dinner went down well,” I say to myself and yank the car door open.
Finally safe in the comfort of my home, feet propped up on a computer armoire desk, I delete the banker from my active mind. He hasn’t gone away entirely, only archived in dormancy as statistic number three.
Thoughts come and go as to where my next banker meal will come from. Which building will I stake out next? Hear me, world, I am not simply hungry for those gangsters. Think again, I beg you without reserve. There are warts on society I must forever pick for satisfaction, nasty itches, burning tingles, a banker addiction so complete and powerful that the fury hacks into my dreams and scares me senseless. “This is a violently delusional craving,” most people might say, but better the recession make me into a diamond than break me into a thousand pieces of emptiness. Not so long ago, two years to be precise, my soul was a seed buried deep in the ground. Since then I have grown, no, I have sprouted, into something akin to a tree in a dark park. Flailing your arms at me is powerless, silly banker. You’re still going down. Now tell me who has the last laugh, Mr. Too Big To Fail?
Listen, world, for my advice can bring true reform. Break out, I urge you. Don't be scared to follow me over the edge.
Lifting my feet off the armoire desk, I blink away the tears that well up. This recession is destroying good people, good families, and good countries, and the only good news is me. The abortive tears of grief succeed in rewinding my mind a couple years, locating the flashpoint of my germination.
So, dear world, I’m about to do you a favor because tonight, for some reason, my fingers are possessed with the typing spirit. Or perhaps it is the collective urging of spirits birthed by this recession. Whatever the motivation, I plan to lay out the facts for you, to reset the tempo and painfully account for my enlightenment, and I do mean painfully with no qualification at all. Only then, will you appreciate the person staring back from the reflecting pool...
CHAPTER 2
I heard two staccato beeps. It took a few seconds for the meaning to register. Text message for me. My thoughts rallied from the jumble of sleep. Was Granny okay? She had to be. The nursing home wouldn’t send a text. They’d surely call if anything happened. I rolled onto my back. Was I supposed to be on a project somewhere? Very unlikely. No chain dragging, core cuts, or leak tests were scheduled for this week and the next.
I groped about the top of the nightstand. Where was my cell phone? The king-size bed sheet rustled from the motion of a body beside me, a body that promptly climbed onto my mine. I flipped my eyes open and saw Julia’s hand snatch the phone from the stand.
“Morning sweetie,” I muttered.
Julia slid onto her side of bed and sat up against the wall, holding the phone to her face while pushing out her lips into a pout.
“The text,” I said, assuming her dark mood had nothing to do with me. “Can you please read it out loud?”
She blasted out a “hah!” and raised her hand high. The silver back of the phone reflected the ominous glow of dawn. Then the hand with the phone arrived and docked alongside my skull. A supernova flashing all shades of red zigzagged through my vision. The reality of throbbing pain transmitted next.
“What’s that all about?” I cried out, kneading my forehead. “What did I do now?”
“What the hell is wrong with your text?” Julia slammed the phone into my chest and left it there. “Asshole!” She flung herself off the bed and stormed across the room, breasts bouncing under a purple nightgown that hid her bracket-like hips.
I picked up the phone the instant she gusted out the door. The text had come from a local Maryland number.
“Our sex yesterday was too good to be true,” the message blared.
A simple texting mix-up, I thought as I stroked the skin just above my right eyebrow. Julia reacts to anything these days.
The week before, there’d been a controversial scientific report on television. It claimed that people in their mid-twenties were most affected by prolonged heat waves. She was starting to make me a disciple of that hypothesis.
I found a sobbing Julia downstairs at the dining room table, head buried in an enclosure of toned arms, shoulders trembling. I patted her back and pulled the chair next to hers.
Her head snapped up. “Don’t you come near me.”
I ran my left hand through her golden brown hair. “It’s nothing to get all worked up about, sweetie. I don’t even know that number.”
Her eyes narrowed.
I offered her the phone in my other hand. “Feel free to read all the texts I’ve sent and received. Look through my call logs also. I’ve got nothing to hide.”
Julia slapped my right hand away. She still looked sexy during a strong sob. The blue-green eyes shimmered and invited a kiss to quivering lips, fleshy meat that my tongue always enjoyed parting. I stifled the urge to lick the sharp bridge of her nose. She wouldn’t want that now.
“Prove you’ve got nothing to hide,” she said.
“How else?”
“Call the person back.”
“Not a problem.”
My call instantly activated a voicemail on the other end, an unknown female voice confirming I’d reached the strange phone number. Running water swished in the background. At the beep, I disconnected without leaving a message.
“Her phone must be off,” I said.
Julia glared at me. “So she turned off the phone. The bitch realizes something is up.”
I felt a trace of tiredness and sat down. There were forty-five minutes of sleep to capture before jumping into the shower. I yawned silently, wondering if the weather could really be blamed for this escalation of Julia’s dark moods. The heat wave was coming to an end, the August sun still an oppressor but ruling at only a fraction of its July might. Julia had never physically lashed out at me until today. Verbally, yes, a few times, like when I forgot to take out the trash or if I tried to initiate a conversation with her when she didn’t feel like talking to the world. Where was our relationship heading? My forehead painfully demanded a caring touch. I stroked a young lump near my eyebrow.
Julia shot up from her chair. “What’s her name?”
I set the phone on the table. “Let’s go back to bed. There’s nothing to argue about.”
She screwed her face into a murderous frown, and then dashed into the kitchen. A latch clicked. An object banged on the ceramic floor tiles. Metalware clanged. Innocently nervous, I sat listening to her rage. Julia was definitely rummaging through the dishwasher. For what? Cutlery jingled, bothering me into standing up. More metal clanged. She emerged at the kitchen entrance, jaw clenched, her hand around a box grater. Before I could say, “You're taking this too far,” the grater rose in a blur with her arm. Primed reflexes pulled down my head, the grater whizzed over, and glass exploded. I risked a hasty look behind. Red roses and shards of vase decorated the coffee table in the living room. I looked at her expression, focused on her eyes. Julia wasn’t satisfied. She retreated into the entrance.
I bounded into the kitchen. She was busy with the dishwasher again, rifling through dishes in the top rack. I girded my arms around her bent shoulders and brought her up and around to face me. Sobbing and shaking, she didn’t resist being embraced.
“It’s over,” she said, averting her eyes from my worried gaze. “That’s the end of us.”
“You’re being very irrational. Why don’t you trust me?”
“There’ll be no engagement, and certainly no marriage. There’s nothing between us right now. Not even a friendship.”
“Think carefully about what you’re saying, Julia.”
“You were supposed to be out with Ned last night.”
“I told you I’d be in DC. You knew Ned and I were going to Lucky Al’s. Ask him.”
“Think Ned will put his good friend in hot water? I doubt it. The same Ned who has a different girlfriend every week? He’s a dog, and you deserve to live in a kennel also.” She pushed out her lips. “We are done.”
I swallowed hard. Her tone of voice threatened with unusual determination.
“Do you want me to try that number again?” I asked sweetly.
“Does ‘naive’ sound like my middle name? The slut has obviously turned off her phone.”
“You need to calm down. This is the first rogue text I’ve received.”
Julia drew in her breath and spat in my face. “Liar! Remember Karen?”
I disentangled from her and wiped fluid off my nose and cheek. “You and I were only good friends back then, and Karen’s text wasn’t rogue. The message was clearly for me.”
I dipped three years into the past, the night Julia and I were playing Chinese checkers. Apart from a flirty kiss we’d shared at work the month before, no other cozy act had occurred between us. Karen’s steamy text struck while I was fixing Julia a Cuba Libre in the kitchen. Granny was already in bed. With teary eyes, Julia had brought me my cell phone. I then realized that my casual intimacy with Karen the Friendly Neighbor was over because Julia, the glamour girl of the office, could really be mine.
“Karen’s text wasn’t rogue,” I insisted.
“I’m moving out next month.”
“What!”
“You heard me. I can’t continue for much longer. You’re going to give me a nervous breakdown anytime.”
“Let’s take the day off,” I said, perhaps and shamefully so, more concerned about our relationship than her emotional wellbeing. “Why don’t we work this out in the bedroom?”
I ran my index finger down the bridge of her nose, attempting to tease out a sultry invitation from her eyes. They didn’t close. Mission failed. She went to the dining room, and I followed like a pull-along plaything.
She grabbed my phone from the table. “I’ll be in the bedroom. You’re staying downstairs on the couch.” She moved to the wooden staircase with a slow, measured walk, as though contemplating what to verbally or physically throw at me next.
“I’ll call the office at seven-fifty,” I said. “We both came down with a mild case of food poisoning. Now that’s a convincing line.”
She stopped at the bottom step, flashing a look that shouted I was dumb.
“Julia,” I begged. “We really need this day for ourselves.”
“Don’t be an ass. It seems like you want us both to get fired. What exactly don’t you get? The two of us taking the same sick day! Everyone at ABLE knows we live together.”
“What we do with our sick days is nobody’s business.”
“You still don’t get it. Let me break it down. Troubled economy. Fart too loud and you’re out the door.”
I understood her point. Worst case scenario, that point applied to her. Work was slow, but I regarded myself immune from the pink slip. ABLE was about sixty strong, and the four shareholders constantly blessed employees with the fact that no one had been let go in the company’s seventeen years of existence. Besides, I was more than just an AutoCAD draftsman. My doubling as field technician lifted me a drafting table higher than anyone in the CAD department, including Julia. Throw in my nine years of solid experience with the company, which translated somewhat into office seniority, and weak economy or not, I foresaw retirement greeting me at ABLE.
“We’re both going to the office,” she said. “In separate cars.”
“But how will that look? Everyone will know there’s a thorn between us.”
“Only way they’ll know is after you tell them.”
She took her time to ascend the stairs, one hand dragging my phone along the top of the handrail. Her heels vanished onto a step I couldn’t see from below, and I shut my eyes to extrapolate the vision of her movement. I hoped there’d be no more days like this. Ever! A missent text had the potential to wreck undying love. In one day, what could two rogue messages that targeted the same person cause? The extinction of mankind? I fingered the lump on my forehead and estimated a twofold increase in bulge since the last check. That called for Granny’s prescription, the ice in cloth treatment, but I assigned sleep as the priority.
I lay on the couch and shut my eyes, waiting for relief. It refused to engulf me. My mind was overstressed. I went to the kitchen and removed an ice tray from the freezer. Under a running faucet, I proceeded to flex out ice cubes into the sink. In the corner of my eye, a shape appeared at the kitchen door. My head turned to the entrance. A silver object flew toward me. It brushed the legs of my boxer shorts and split in three on striking the wall. I blinked. My phone lay dismembered on the floor, the main body, cover, and battery scattered within an eight foot radius.
“Another text just came from your lover, you lying son of a bitch!” Julia yelled as she pulled out from the kitchen. “It’s clearly for you!” I heard her stomp up the stairs and slam a door.
I reassembled the phone, wondering whether I’d jinxed myself by thinking about the consequence of two rogue messages in one day. Leaning against the wall for some kind of emotional support, I turned the phone on and waited for the power-up display to clear. My intent was to call the sender right after reading the second text. If she couldn’t be reached, I’d politely enlighten her with a voicemail message. I heard Julia stomp down the stairs and braced myself for more confrontation.
She came up to my face, fist clenched like she wanted to knock me into an emergency room. “Why? I was willing to forgive you for the first one.” She grabbed the phone and pressed the top left button of the keypad. “Meet me again at Lucky Al’s tonight.”
“That can’t be what it says!” I snatched back the phone and looked. The second text was really there, same unfamiliar phone number, every letter of the message propositioning me.
“This is some sick joke,” I stuttered. “Don’t know what else to tell you.”
“How about this? ‘Goodbye Julia. I messed up big time.’” She stalked off.
I called the sender’s number. The voicemail answered immediately, annoying me. Somebody seemed to be playing a game. The voice I left for the other side to hear said, “Hi there. You have been texting the wrong person. We never met at Lucky Al’s and probably never will. Have a nice day.” I hung up.
Ned’s rangy image broke into my troubled thoughts. The fact stood bold that he and I were at Lucky Al’s the previous night. Were the texts his idea of a prank? Sometimes he didn’t know the outer limits of his perverted mind. Maybe he was texting from a girlfriend’s phone. Or maybe someone was carrying out his remote orders.
On the way to comfort Julia, I stopped to look at the coffee table. The vase had been my Valentine’s Day gift to her. Now it was broken. The mess had to be cleaned up before we left for work; the townhouse wasn’t ours, and leasing agents from the management office, not to mention the tattletale maintenance staff, had the right to knock and enter at will. Head down, I climbed the stairs with a soundless tread. Breaking up over someone’s mistake was the height of madness.
I discovered the doorknob of the master bedroom wouldn’t twist. Julia had locked me out. I stood outside, listening to her going through drawers and dumping stuff on the bed.
“What are you doing?” I asked after a minute.
“Moving out today.”
I hadn’t brought myself to believe what she was about to do until those three words sprang out. They jarred in a way that rivaled the blow to my forehead. “There's no reason to go anywhere. Ned sent those texts. When I see the bastard I’m going to punt him out an office window.”
The room became quiet, possibly indicating she was willing to listen and reverse course.
“That guy is so irresponsible,” I said, hearing her close a drawer.
“Until we know for sure it’s him, you leave me no choice. I’m sleeping in a motel tonight.”
I placed a frantic call to Ned’s cell phone. Four rings later he answered with a breathy hello.
“Your texts are not funny,” I said in a voice loud enough for Julia to hear.
“Dude, don’t wake me up for bullshit,” he replied. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He hung up before I could apologize.
I sat against the door and scratched my chin with the edge of the phone. The air conditioning unit came on, taunting me with its hum.
CHAPTER 3
A buzzing alarm cut short my doze and got my lazy body to stand. I tried the door. Still locked. The radio alarm kept on buzzing, hinting that Julia was in the bathroom. I thought about the room keys and remembered they were inside the second drawer of the nightstand, an object now beyond my reach.
After a quick shower downstairs, I returned to the door of the master bedroom wearing only a guest towel. The buzzer had been turned off, and the ironing board inside the room gave off telltale creaks. I tapped on the door for two minutes and waited another. Julia didn’t break, so I hit the kitchen for a quick breakfast of apple juice and bagels before revisiting my upstairs frustration. My clothes, shoes, toothbrush, roll-on deodorant, comb, and electric shaver were inside that room, the essentials helping to define me as a sane worker. When Julia finally came out, she was dressed in a slack blouse and tenacious jeans, her preferred Friday outfit, but in addition, her purple sports bag hung from one shoulder.
“Sweetie, where are you going with that bag?” I tried to ask in a soothing tone.
Julia flashed a middle finger and sidestepped me at the door. I followed an angry sashay down the stairs, planning to pour out common sense for its owner in the kitchen. She went straight to the front door.
“Please don’t do this,” I said.
She turned to me with mocking eyes. “Don’t do what…skip breakfast? Don’t go to work?”
“Please don’t leave with that bag.”
I wanted to take her into my arms, tell her I was sorry for a crime I didn’t commit. Instead, I let her go. She’d mature during the day and return home long before the start of the six-thirty evening news that we always watched together. Through the window, I watched her purple Ford Mustang leave the parking lot for Washington, DC, the tire rims flicking glints of sunshine at me. I hastily continued preparing for work.
On getting into my Chevy Camaro, I tried the strange phone number once again. The voicemail answered promptly. I cut it off and revved out the gate of the townhouse complex with Julia riding shotgun in my head. Had she reached work yet? Her impulsive nature coupled with nasty mood swings were pushing her to do crazier things. Hooking a right at a stop sign, I zoomed up Route One North, a road that always turned into a runway when I was late for work. Two hundred meters ahead, an unwanted sight hindered my progress--stationary vehicles spilled out from the Beltway entry lane. A screaming fire truck raced past on Route One, followed by a wailing Dodge Charger, the larger-than-life emblem of the Maryland State Police stamped across one door. Then a helicopter came with an urgent rumble, its reflection darting across the polished black of the Camaro’s hood. I powered around the rear of the tailback and detoured into a College Park neighborhood. It hit me that the foreclosure signs along the street were becoming a bigger eyesore than the unkempt lawns they fronted.
At twenty-two minutes past the eight am start of my workday, I pulled into the entrance of the tallest parking garage in Northwest, DC. Above me, a painter brushed slowly, adding refreshing strokes to the “Washington Premier Bank” sign hanging from a concrete beam. I shook my head in disbelief and drove under his scaffold. The bank was wasteful. Washington Premier needed to spend money on parking garage restoration. Anytime the rain turned nasty, the garage reliably leaked in several locations.
I spotted the purple Mustang while driving up the second level of the garage. Nosing into a spot on Level 3, I was tempted to take Julia’s spare keys out of my glove compartment. The sports bag had to be in her car. Without it, I didn’t think she would overnight at the motel. I ditched the sneaky idea, telling myself she’d come home directly after work.
I took the garage elevator to street level and hurried across the street, making a beeline for the high-rise structure which housed the single-floor office of ABLE. Window washers with squeegees dangled from the roof like ornaments on the Christmas tree I’d bought Julia. But the windows weren’t dirty. Once more, it became clear that Washington Premier was throwing money at superficial projects. What their building really needed were faster elevators. Larger ones too.
The owner of the restaurant on the building’s second floor walked in with me. The bowlegged Chinese man and I exchanged a greeting and the usual indifferent smiles, and he entered the lobby stairwell. I watched the door click shut behind the patter of his topsiders. Although I was late, I didn’t feel like treading up to ABLE’s office. Seven minutes later, an elevator door slid open, and the smell of cigarette smoke mixed with stale coffee disgusted me, confirming I was stepping into the most sluggish of three available elevators. As I pressed the button for the fifth floor, two men in navy blue business suits bustled into my tight space.
“Good morning,” I said, listening for their responsive tongues.
The blonder of the two held an access card against the button panel and pressed for the nineteenth floor, the corporate suite of Washington Premier. “If they can’t pay their rent they have to go,” he said to his companion.
The other man nodded. “How many months are they behind?”
“Two,” the blonder one replied.
The elevator door shut out the lobby, and the buttons for the fifth and nineteenth floors went pale. The elevator rose with a slow groan, as though calling out for a junkyard to give it final rest.
The blonder man fixed the neck of his tie. “This can’t continue. Either ABLE pays up or gets out. What’s the big man saying?”
“He wanted them out ten months ago,” the other said. “Now he has an excuse.”
The fifth floor arrived, and I stepped out, puzzled, fearful. At ABLE’s staff meeting the week before, the shareholders hadn’t flashed any distress signals. What the hell was going on? My story would shock Julia.
I stopped to greet the receptionists at the front desk. They both seemed too jovial to know anything about ABLE’s possible demise. Why spoil their day with a depressing rumor, an oil spill that would be hard to contain once caught in the current of the office? I shoved off from the front desk and heard them giggle, perhaps because I’d stuttered out my “good morning.” Smiling self-consciously, I saw a window washer rappel into view and wave his squeegee at us. The women giggled some more as I opened a brass door that led to a zigzag of passages around cubicles. From that maze, keyboards clicked and papers rustled, a normal Friday at the office. I walked twelve meters to my left and opened the glass double door of the CAD department. Julia sat at her cubicle, the first on the right.
I stopped at her enclosure and rested my chin on the edge of the cubicle partition. “Got some news for you.”
She bent her head toward the computer monitor and moved her lips silently. There was nothing to read on the screen, except a picture of a diamond necklace.
“Want me to buy that for you?” I joked.
She didn’t answer, kept moving her lips. A whale of a head breached into view from the adjoining cubicle. I rattled off a “good morning” to Jones, the portly man who sounded like SpongeBob SquarePants. I can’t have coworkers finding out about the fight, I thought. I’ll pleasantly ignore Julia until she gets home.
The youngest of ABLE’s shareholders came through the double door and halted at Julia’s cubicle. “Don’t you have work to do?” he asked me, his blue eyes and harsh voice cutting into my feelings like a scalpel. “You’re already later than late.”
Julia toggled her screen to an AutoCAD elevation view of a high-rise hotel. I apologized to the heavyset shareholder for wasting time and went to the last cubicle on the right, reckoning I didn’t have the license to ask him about his company’s health. The situation couldn’t be that critical. He seemed his everyday self.
A blueprint lay across my desk, a faded paper showing the site plan for an existing Washington, DC hospital. On a Post-it attached to the sheet, somebody had scribbled a request. I wheeled out my chair and sat down.
A hand rapped against my cubicle, jewelry tinkling. “How are we doing today?”
I looked up and spotted the silver bracelets on her forearm before seeing the army veteran’s face. “Could be better and could be worse.”
She giggled and returned to her cubicle, noisily rolling out her chair. Although the veteran was an office extrovert, I didn’t consider her someone whom I could ask about ABLE’s financial pulse. She relayed information like a propaganda agent, highly skilled at twisting anything coworkers whispered into a cyclone of lies. I’d made the mistake of telling her Julia didn’t want to have children. The veteran then told a Canadian coworker that Julia’s hatred of children forced me into having a vasectomy.
My thoughts settled on the two bankers. To them, I'd never existed in their time and space. Did they know I was an ABLE employee? They saw me press the fifth floor button. Then again, my blue jeans and white polo shirt did not distinguish me from the man on the street. Regardless, it was obvious the elevator had to stop at ABLE’s office before continuing to the corporate suite. Were the bankers trying to warn me, maybe attempting to turn me into a human alarm for other ABLE employees? A deeper notion took root. Those bankers were downright haughty. I’d greeted them, and they hadn’t even acknowledged my presence, staring through me like I were a mere storefront window in the wintertime. But the cold shoulder didn’t excuse their reckless conversation. Unless they knew it was over for ABLE, and that was a shuddering thought.
I applied myself to deciphering the writing on the Post-it. Which of the engineers had written it? Most thought they were above the function of taking the time to write clearly for a draftsperson. Most probably would have wanted me to salute when they strolled by my cubicle, but their arrogance was a billion dollars apart from that of the two bankers and more often than not, could be overlooked. Ned had told me the arrogance of civil engineers arose from the slight of having an undervalued degree. Where is he? I wondered, hoping he wasn’t in the field. I need an easygoing engineer to interpret the instructions on the Post-it.
On my way to see Ned I glanced at Julia. She was editing annotation for the elevation view of the hotel. I opened the double door, and Adriana broadsided my forward motion. I staggered edgewise, stopping short of a fax machine. The Italian architect gave a laugh for an apology and exited into the reception area.
Ned was in his cubicle. I stood outside his work space, watching him feed data into a structural analysis program. I’d never dropped my jealousy over his affair with the computer keyboard. Why did he have to type notably faster than me? And his flour-white fingers moved with enviable soul on the keyboard. Julia once said they tap-danced as good as Bojangles. Coming from someone who thought Ned was a bad influence on me, that was indeed solid praise.
He looked up and saw my head above the cubicle. His shrieking laugh was spontaneous, the auburn moustache and upper lip trembling over the gap between his top incisors. After the brief cackle, he wiped his mouth with the long sleeve of his shirt. “Whassup?”
“I owe you a minute of sleep,” I said, guessing he was humored by my early phone call.
The engineer in the cubicle behind Ned gruffly told us to keep down the chatter. The engineer in front said exactly the same thing. Ned stuck out his tongue at the partition.
“Someone sent me two wild texts,” I told him in a low voice.
“Aren’t you curious to find out why I’m laughing?” he asked, not bothering to speak softly.
I handed him the Post-it. “Tell me after you translate this.”
“Lucien wants the site plan redrawn from scratch. Plot it on a 24 by 36.” He stuck the Post-it against a small calculator that touched his keyboard. “Take a walk to the front desk. Come back and tell me what you hear.”
“I’ve got work to do, Ned. The bosses can’t see me looking idle. They’ll chew me up.”
He stood up, topping my six-foot-one height by three inches. “Pretend you’re looking for a printout,” he whispered.
“When I return, there’s something I need to ask you about the company.”
I walked out to the reception area, listening for anything on the far side of normal. Both women at the front desk were talking on the phone. Nothing made me think twice. I went to the color photocopier and stooped, eying a stack of unclaimed printouts that burdened the lowest tray. Then I heard one receptionist put her handset down and snicker. Pulling the stack from the tray, I thumbed through the papers, continuing to monitor the office noise. I heard the second receptionist cradle her handset.
“How’s life?” she asked.
I slid the stack back into tray.
“How’s life?” the first one asked.
I stood up and looked at them. They were staring at me. I couldn’t tell whether they were amused or happy.
“Just fine,” I replied. “Didn’t realize you guys were talking to me.”
I ambled to the brass door of the main office and opened it. Both women snickered. Hand around the doorknob, I looked back at their desk. They swiftly lowered their heads. When I returned to Ned, I told him about them.
“Let’s see that site plan,” he said, getting up. “It’s Lucien’s project, but my contribution might be useful.” He followed me to my cubicle. “Roll up the sheet. The conference room should be empty.”
“We’re going there now?”
“Yes, now.”
I trailed him into the conference room. The oversized table was layered with completed drawing sheets, a few of which I’d worked on for various engineers. At the nearer end of the table, candy wrapping and two cracked paper cups sat on a cross-section through a US Department of Agriculture building. Ned swatted the cups off the sheet and took the hospital blueprint from me.
I brushed the wrapping aside. “Spill the news.”
He unrolled the old blueprint over the USDA sheet. “How many women did you hear laugh this morning?”
“In the office?”
“I’d hope only there.”
"Three or four.”
“They were laughing at your forehead. Your bump is half an inch thick. What caused it?”
“My cell phone,” I said, embarrassed.
“That’s why you’re my friend. I knew you wouldn’t lie to me. Julia got you with the phone.”
I felt her betrayal in my rapidly beating heart. “She told you?”
“Julia blabbed to some of the office girls.” He crossed two fingers. “G.I. Jane and I are tighter than you think. Dude, last weekend we were inseparable.”
Ned paused, looking at me with the pride of a victorious general. Defeated by the knowledge that Julia was discussing our private life, I signaled zero interest in hearing about his bedding of the army veteran.
“You’ve become office entertainment,” he said. “You’re a truly sad story.”
I remembered the veteran’s lie, the vasectomy which never happened. “Tell me exactly what she said.”
Ned related the incident with near accuracy. He did get a color and object wrong. The roses in the vase weren’t white, and it was the grater, not a colander, that became a missile. However, the veteran hadn’t misrepresented the fundamentals. After Ned finished telling me everything I knew, he asked for my phone.
I dug into my pocket and handed him the mobile. “Two bad texts and this heat wave make for a deadly combination.”
Ned read the two texts and gave me the phone. “The heat has nothing to do with it. Julia has a right to be pissed. It’s her duty. From now on keep your phone on silent when you’re home. Put a password also.”
“What for? I don’t mess around.”
A smile crossed his face. “What do I know? The first pitcher of beer came, and we left Lucky Al’s soon after. You could have returned to the bar after I drove off.”
“Shove it where the sun don’t shine.”
“What I’m saying is-”
The door opened. We bent over the blueprint, side by side, intently studying nothing.
“I’ll need the room in ten minutes,” a doe-eyed engineer informed. “Are you scheduled to be here?” He pulled the door shut.
“Give Julia breathing space,” Ned said. “Every woman needs that. Trust me. Don’t take my advice, and I don’t see a future for you two lovebirds.”
Uncomfortable with his prophecy, I straightened my back.
“Do the right thing,” Ned said, straightening himself also. “Start going out on your own. There’s a new strip club near Wisconsin and Fulton. We can go there tonight. Julia doesn’t have to know. She won’t be with you this weekend anyway.”
Ned had just helped me grasp the shocker, the likelihood that my sweetie staying at the motel equaled the chance of her returning home after work. “What should I do to stop Julia?”
“Let her be,” he said, separating each word with a meaningful pause. “She’s not going to mess around at the motel. This whole text business will blow over this weekend.”
“If it doesn’t?”
“It will. I know women.” He squinted at me. “When Julia left for work, did you get in touch with your mystery lady? I’d have sent a stern text.”
“I left a courteous voicemail.”
“Courteous as in courteous or courteous as in blunt?”
“I tried to be polite.”
Ned stretched his hand toward me. “Give me your phone.” He found the text that mentioned Lucky Al’s and called the sender’s number. He left a message that said, “Whoever you are, you’re not supposed to text this number. Do it again, and I’ll spam your phone with so much text you won’t recognize the English alphabet anymore.”
I grabbed my phone and ended the call. “That was uncalled for.”
“She’ll never text you again.” He rubbed his hands and clapped once. “Second order of business. What about the company?”
“This is highly confidential,” I warned. “Keep G.I. Jane out of this.”
“You’re clear to speak.”
I told him about the bankers. He seemed a little surprised about their conversation, not excessively so; his mouth hadn’t opened all the way. Then he asked me to take my time and repeat the incident.
“Two bankers got into the elevator with me,” I began.
He raised his hand. “Stop right there. Sure they were bankers?”
“One used an access card for the nineteenth floor. They spoke about ABLE not being able to pay rent, about the big man wanting us out. They also smelled like bankers.”
Ned smiled for an unbearable while, a count of eight or nine seconds that put me down. “Describe the smell.”
“The odor doesn’t actually exist. It’s…it’s how they conduct themselves in public. Sets off a bad smell in my mind, almost like rotten onions.”
“Are you okay?” He gave a short cackle. “Those guys didn’t literally mean that ABLE was going to get the boot. It’s the banker way of talking.”
“I’m not stupid, Ned.”
“If ABLE hasn’t paid them rent for two months, there’s probably a very good reason for that. Maybe Washington Premier owes us for services rendered. ABLE has done structural evaluations for several of their Virginia and Maryland branches. Do you recall I did some chloride testing at a Baltimore branch a few years ago?” He tugged an end of his moustache. “I hope they went ahead with the full depth concrete repairs I recommended.” He rolled up the hospital blueprint and handed it to me. “ABLE isn’t going anywhere. Think about it.”
Ned was doing a scientist’s job of dissecting my insecurity and discarding the pieces. What authority did I have to doubt him? True, we were both a year shy of thirty, and it could be argued that age made us equals. However, I was a mere draftsman, trained at a second-rate state college for two years. He was the more intelligent life form in the room. Virginia Tech had developed his analytical mind for four years.
“The government’s economic stimulus needs time to work,” Ned went on. “ABLE has a shitload of projects in the pipeline. We’ll be hiring green hands real soon.”
“Did we get that state contract for Myersville Elementary?”
He put a finger to his lips. “Yes, but you didn’t hear it from me. The word isn’t officially out.”
“What’s worse than an ABLE junior engineer?”
“What, dickhead?”
“An ABLE project manager who thinks he’s company royalty.”
Ned playfully punched me on the arm. “Don’t be a hater. I work my butt off for six years, and they won’t make me an associate.” He patted my shoulder. “You need some fresh air. I’ll tell Lucien I’m borrowing you in an hour. You should be done with his site plan by then.” He walked to the door and turned around with a pointing finger. “Get Julia off your noggin. I’m not saying you misheard the bankers, but it’s been well documented that stress can make people imagine things.”